Billing for your medical store in Puducherry
The strip, the loose tablet and the monthly medicine, all on one bill on your phone.
Why a Puducherry medical shop is watched by a camera and still needs its own record of the day
The camera sees the counter and the notebook sees nothing
Cameras were ordered for shops that sell the stricter classes of medicine, inside and outside the door. A camera shows a person at the counter. It does not show what was handed over, in what quantity, at what hour of which day. When a doctor or an officer asks what went out on a certain day, the footage is long and the notebook is short. The notebook that the shop keeps for its own reasons is the only record that can be put on the table.
A fever week when every house asks for the same strips on the same day
When fever goes round the town, house after house asks for the same strips, the same sachets and the same thermometer in the same days. The strips run out by the second day and the sachets after them. The notebook has one line, fever medicine, that cannot say which went first.
The small clinic next door that takes strips by the dozen and settles on the first
In a fever week the clinic nearby sends its boy every day for the same syrup and strips, each time with a slip. Slips are small and the days are many, and a lost slip is a lost day: the syrup left your shelf and nothing on paper says which morning it was. Neither side is dishonest. The clinic's count and yours can no longer agree.
From the officer's question about one day to the clinic that takes strips by the dozen
The stricter-class medicines easy to find on the day the order is asked about
The order that put cameras inside and outside the shop covers the stricter classes of medicine. Name each of those medicines plainly, so that one day's sales lets you find them quickly among the syrups and the strips. When the footage of a day is asked for, you open that day on your phone and read the stricter ones first.
The fever strips and the sachets counted shelf by shelf before the spell, not after
In the dengue season of 2023 the Chief Minister ordered medicine stocks kept ready. For a medical shop, ready means the fever strips, the sachets and the thermometer counted before the spell. Make each its own item with its own count, and every sale takes its strip off, so what the order asked you to keep ready is a number you can read at any hour.
The clinic's boy comes daily in a fever week for the same syrup and strips
In a fever week the clinic's boy comes every day for the same syrup and the same strips. Each trip is a bill on the clinic's page with its day, so a lost slip does not become a lost day: the syrup on Tuesday and the strips on Wednesday are both there. When the clinic asks what the week cost, it reads the same list that you do.
Fields, boats and Mahe's trade: where a Puducherry medical shop's patients come from
The people who come to a medical shop in Puducherry come from the fields, the boats and the small towns of the outer regions.
- Most people in the Puducherry region farm, rear animals or fish for a living, while the educated work in industries and service jobs.
- Mahe is described as one of Puducherry's growing trade and commerce centres, with small, cottage and medium industries.
Tools for a counter that sells medicine by the strip and by the tablet
Daily reports
A fever spell opened day after day with every medicine and its count shows what a notebook never records: on which day the rush began, and which strips were gone by the second day, so the next spell is met with the right lot.
Low stock warnings
In a dengue week the regulars' own strips are forgotten while the fever strips take every hand. A warning on them shows the shortfall before the rush hides it, and the order goes in time.
Questions a Puducherry medical shop asks about camera orders, clinics and thermometers
The officer asks only for the lines of the stricter-class medicines. Can I show those alone?
Find the lines of those medicines by their names in the day's sales and show only them. The other lines stay on the page unread, so the officer sees what he asked for and nothing more of the day's trade than that.
Can the phone tell me which strip is nearest its expiry date?
No. The date is on the strip, not on the phone. The phone's cue is the sales: after a dengue spell, the strips that sold for a fortnight and then stopped are the ones to turn over on the shelf and read.
Houses that came for the fever strips ask me to tell them when the next lot arrives. Can the phone do that?
Not by itself. But every house that bought in the fever week has a bill on your WhatsApp, so you know who they are. When the lot comes, write to those houses yourself, with the name of the medicine.
A dengue season and a camera order in Puducherry
Puducherry recorded 1,175 dengue cases by 13 September 2023 against 792 a year earlier, and the Chief Minister ordered medicine stocks kept ready. For a medical shop a season like that means the same fever medicines asked for by many households in the same weeks, and a count that is only honest at the counter.
In December 2022 the Puducherry District Magistrate ordered medical shops selling Schedule H, H1 and X drugs to install CCTV cameras inside and outside within one month. The camera shows who came to the counter. The bill is the shop's own record of what was sold and on what day, and the two are kept side by side.